What book are you reading right now?

[JohnTheVoyeur]

Starting Upon Further Review - The Greatest What-Ifs In Sports History, by Mike Pesca.

[oldguymem]

Just finished reading The Last Paladin, by PT Deutermann. It is a WWII ship vs sub story based on a true story.
And always enjoying short stories at Kristen's archive! Love the ones about adult male and female with young.

[purpleshoes]

The Perfect Daughter by Daniel Palmer (2021) Psychological thriller/murder mystery/courtroom drama

Sixteen year old Penny was adopted at the age of four. She has been diagnosed with Dissociative Identity Disorder (multiple personalities) and is charged with murdering her birth mother. Very entertaining story.

[chef64]

reading 2 books. Biloxi Boys  by J Grissom and Fairy Tales by s King. Both good.

[MintJulie]

Where the Crawdads Sing.

Read the book before, still on my kindle.  Saw the movie.  Rereading until I can download a new book on Kindle.

[MintJulie]

The First Wife by Jill Childs

Just getting going on it. 


Have I mentioned Libby here before.  It's an app.  Free books with a library card.  Have to wait a bit for some, but they deliver right to your kindle account.   Love it. Haven't paid for a book in a year now. 

Logging off to read now.  Goodnight. 

[Coach Eric]

The First Wife by Jill Childs

Just getting going on it. 


Have I mentioned Libby here before.  It's an app.  Free books with a library card.  Have to wait a bit for some, but they deliver right to your kindle account.   Love it. Haven't paid for a book in a year now. 

Logging off to read now.  Goodnight.

Good night 

[msslave]

Once again I've started re-reading all of Sir Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories. I've read through them several times but every few years I come back and pick up the volume again.  What the heck, it only 1100+ pages, and I have the time

I find the writing from the turn of the century easy to fall into. I'll be spending a few weeks in.old London and shadowing Holmes and Watson. The game is afoot.

[chef64]

Farie Tales by S King

[MintJulie]

     


This is me.  Especially the first part.

[Hilda]

     


This is me.  Especially the first part.

I remember reading the second half of Frank Herbert's "Dune" in one long sitting, coming to the end, and finding myself back in the real world. Through the window of my shabby room I could see rain pouring down and smell the moisture in the air.

I can't put into words the feelings that I experienced. I almost cried at the blessed beauty of rain.

[msslave]

I can just imagine  "coming back from the dry sands of Dune" to a rainy day.

As a Sci Fi fan from my youth I've often been drawn into other worlds and cultures. Back here on earth I got wrapped up in the life of the young girl in, " Where The, Crawdads Sing". Guess it was my love of nature that had me relate to her. 

When am author can transport you into another world like that, it's magical.

[Hilda]

I'm reading "That State of Life" written in 1938 by British author and broadcaster Hilton Brown. The theme is people dissatisfied with their work and relationships.

I've read other novels by Brown and never noted anything strange. Well-written, well-researched, and spiced with the right amount of humour.

For some reason the current novel has got me consulting my favourite dictionary (Chambers) every few minutes. Words, expressions, acronyms, and abbreviations I've never come across. Chambers, which is excellent for dialect, tells me that some of the problem words are First Word War slang and corruptions of French picked up by British soldiers. Many of the acronyms and abbreviations have to do with the Spanish Civil War, which plays a significant part in the narrative. The thing is, I'm sure the people who read this book when it was published had no difficulty deciphering these cryptic items.

Coming across books like this makes me think of the power of current events to mould vocabulary and change language. I tell myself that I'm better off not knowing the meaning of "napoo" (from the French il n'y en a plus) or "gaby" (dialect for simpleton). But it still irks me that I'm struggling with fairly straightforward text that was abundantly clear to the readers of 85 years ago. George Steiner wrote a lengthy study of this very phenomenon. After Babel: Aspects of Language and Translation (1975).

I had absolutely no luck finding a meaning for "airwoman". Dictionaries tell me it's a female flier, but the context is ". . . except for charwomen, airwomen and fallen women, there were no women in [her] world"

Women who air washing, or air rooms, or air something? Women who come and go like air, i.e. unreliable? Women who daydream and are up in the air? Can anyone help?

And while I'm on the subject of the Spanish Civil War, there's a scene in the book that made my skin crawl. A bunch of International Brigade volunteers are billeted in a deserted convent. Two of them come back drunk from a visit to the nearest town. One of them points to a small gateway at the entrance to the convent and asks his companion if he knows what's in there. "Sure, it's a cemetery," his friend replies. "Do you know what's buried there?" "The nuns?" "No, babies!"

Dear oh dear. Memories of the Magdalene Sisters scandal in Ireland. And the same thing happening in Spain decades earlier.

[Hilda]

==> Terry Welbourn. T. C. Lethbridge: The Man Who Saw the Future. Alresford, Hants, UK: O-Books, 2011.



I first came across Lethbridge in a book by Colin Wilson, who wrote a foreword for the above.

Lethbridge was an eccentric who experimented with mapping the 'vibrations' of metals and archaeological objects. He used a pendulum to determine the frequencies of elements. I tried it myself and found that a homemade pendulum responded well. I used it to triangulate the location of a watch that had gone missing, with no luck. I suspect that my daughter dropped it in the rubbish bin. It was one of those with a lid you open by stepping on a small pedal. When she was 3-4 yrs old she loved dropping anything that moved into the bin.

[msslave]

I picked up a volume of Dashiell Hammett stories. Just started "The Maltese Falcon". Yes, I've read it a few times plus.have see the movie many times.

I still find it an enjoyable read. It's one of the few stories where Hammett gives the main character a name, Sam Spade. Most of what I've read have been about the Continental Op. He never got a name, just that he worked for the Continental Detective Agency.

Giving Sam Spade a name made it easier to take it to the silver screen.

The book is enjoyable as Spade peels back the layers of the woman who first hired him. Then the rest of the gang gets involved but Spade is up to the task

Sidebar:

The movie for the most part follows the book. Much of the dialogue is taken right off the pages of the book.
It was also the first film John Huston directed. I remember seeing him on a talk show. He talked about how everyone was ready to shoot the first scene. Actors all in place, crew ready to film but nothing was happening. Finally somebody leaned over and whispered to Huston, You need to say action.

[Pornhubby]

Great flick with Bogey. I have a copy in my Prime account.

[Writers Bloque]

It being the spooky season, I am sitting here at my desk reading a book with a collection of gothic horror stories from a long time ago. Also Poe is the good read for the horror that needs no monsters, but shining the light on the evil of humanity.

[Shiela_M]

It being the spooky season, I am sitting here at my desk reading a book with a collection of gothic horror stories from a long time ago. Also Poe is the good read for the horror that needs no monsters, but shining the light on the evil of humanity.

Growing up I had a book called Scary Stories to tell in the dark. The monochromatic sketches inside the book made the stories all the more creepy and scary. I had nightmares about some of those sketches.

[msslave]

Jeez Shiela after seeing those pics you dug up from that old book of scary stories, I can see why you posted in "Can't Sleep" topic. Those are scary.

[Hilda]

==> H. P. Blavatsky. From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan. London: Theosophical Publication Society, 1892.

A compiliation of 'letters' that Blavatsky wrote for the Russian Messenger aka Russian Herald (Русский Вестник) magazine, documenting her travels in 1879-80. Very long-winded but offering a glimpse of her fascination with things Indian.

The London branch of the TS had a splendid library of which I made much use. A few weeks ago I read that they were moving out of the old premises. Such a pity.